Ali Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara/Kokatha kunga (woman) born on Kaurna land. As a baby Ali was adopted into the Eckermann family. She has received great success as a poet and verse novelist. Her work consistently reflects upon her personal journey and her reconnection with her Aboriginal family. Ali has won several awards. In 2013, 40 poems and 1 short story were translated into Bengali at Jadavpur University and published in Kolkata. Ali runs an Aboriginal Writers Retreat in Koolunga, SA, where she now lives. The retreat provides a creative, relaxed, and enjoyable environment for artistic projects and the advancement of Indigenous literacy.

Captain Amarinder Singh is an Indian politician. Belonging to the erstwhile royal state of Patiala he is a former Chief Minister of Punjab. At present he is Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the 16th Lok Sabha. He joined the Indian Army in June 1963 after graduating from the National Defence Academy and Indian Military before resigning in early 1965. He rejoined again as hostilities broke out with Pakistan and served as Captain in the 1965 Indo-Pak War. He has written books on war and Sikh history which include A Ridge Too Far, Lest We Forget, The Last Sunset: Rise and Fall of Lahore Durbar and The Sikhs in Britain:150 years of Photographs. His latest book is Honour and Fidelity: India's Military Contribution to the Great War 1914 to 1918.

Amrita Chowdhury has written Faking It, an art crime thriller, and Breach, a cyber thriller. She holds engineering degrees from IIT Kanpur, UC Berkeley and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. She holds 7 US patents for semiconductor manufacturing and has done strategy consulting and Board governance in US and Australia. She has worked in higher education and publishing.

Ashis Nandy is an Indian political psychologist, social theorist, and critic. A trained clinical psychologist, Nandy has provided theoretical critiques of European colonialism, development, modernity, secularism, Hindutwa, science, technology, nuclearism, cosmopolitanism, and utopia. He has also offered alternative conceptions relating to cosmopolitanism and critical traditionalism. In addition to the above, Nandy has offered an original historical profile of India's commercial cinema as well as critiques of state and violence. He is Senior Honorary Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) apart from being the Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures in New Delhi. Nandy received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2007. In 2008 he appeared on the list of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll of the Foreign Policy magazine, published by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Born in Calcutta, Avik Chanda graduated from Presidency College and completed his education at the Delhi School of Economics. Following a brief stint in media, he has pursued a career in management consulting over the last ten years, during which time he has also been moonlighting as a freelance journalist, painter and more recently, a poet, writing in both English and his native Bengali. His work has been published in a number of journals, and Footnotes is his first collection in English. His first novel Anchor is just out.

Bikram Grewal is an author, birdwatcher and conservationist from Delhi, India, who has written several guides to Indian birds. He has been working with governments and private groups to promote eco-tourism in Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal and Nagaland. His book Birds of India, has been a best-seller among Indian bird books. He has also been part of the Inheritance Series brought out by Sanctuary Asia.

Caryl Ferey was born in Caen, France. In 1994, he published his first novel Avec un ange sur les yeux. In 1995 he published his first crime novel Delicta Mortalia – péché mortel in which Detective Mc Cash appeared for the first time. In 2008, he published Zulu – his first novel to be translated into English, a huge success both in France and abroad. It was his third novel and second crime novel which made him famous and started his career as a French crime novelist. Being himself a great traveller, the writer locates his novels all around the world.

More a writer of history than a historian, Charles Allen was born in Cawnpore (today Kanpur) in India in the last days of the British Raj and was subsequently exiled at the age of seven. He returned to his homeland initially as a teacher volunteer, then as a BBC researcher and has been travelling in and writing about South and Central Asia ever since—to the tune of 23 books and many radio and TV documentaries, the first being Plain Tales from the Raj (1975), the most recent Ashoka: the Search for India’s Lost Emperor (2012).

Born in Kolkata, Devdan Chaudhuri was educated in India (Fergusson College, Pune) and England (University of Essex). While pursuing his Masters, he lost the inspiration to become an economist and returned to Kolkata to work on his writings and research. Over the years he became an entrepreneur in the art and hospitality sectors. He enjoys travelling and photography. Anatomy of Life, his debut novel - nominated for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize 2013 – has just been recently published.

David Davidar is an Indian novelist and publisher. He is the author of three published novels, The House of Blue Mangoes (2002), The Solitude of Emperors (2007) and Ithaca (2011). In parallel to his writing career, Davidar has been a publisher for a quarter century. He is the co-founder of Aleph Book Company, a literary publishing firm based in New Delhi. Davidar was a columnist for the Hindu newspaper in the 1990s. He has also written numerous articles and book reviews for newspapers and magazines in India, the UK and the US.

Esther Syiem teaches English Literature at the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong and has been working on Khasi Folk and Oral Literature. Some of her publications include Oral Scriptings (a poetry collection), Ka Nam (a Khasi play), of follies and frailties of wit and wisdom (a poetry collection), and The Oral Discourse in Khasi Folk Narrative. She writes in English and Khasi.

Florence Noiville, a French author and journalist, is a long time staff writer for Le Monde and editor of foreign fiction for Le Monde des Livres. She has done numerous interviews and profiles including Saul Bellow, Imre Kertész, John le Carré, Mario Vargas Llosa, Herta Müller. From 2007 to 2010, she also hosted a literary show on French television. While working for Le Monde, Florence Noiville also began writing. She started with children's books and then published a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning American author Isaac Bashevis Singer, which received a 2004 Biography Award. Later, she published The Gift, her first novel. In 2009, Florence Noiville wrote a half-essay, half-personal narrative short text about capitalism and its excesses, called "I Went to Business School and I apologize". Noiville's books are translated into 12 languages.

Goutam Ghose is an acclaimed film director, music director, and cinematographer who works primarily in Bengali cinema. He started making documentaries in 1973. He also took active part in the group theatre movement in Calcutta and worked as a Photo Journalist. He made his first documentary, New Earth, in 1973, followed by Hungry Autumn which won him the main award at the Oberhausen Film Festival. He has since made ten feature films including Maa Bhoomi, Dakhal, Paar, Antarjali Yatra, Padma Nadir Majhi, Patang, Dekha, Abar Aranye, Gudia, Kaalbela & Moner Manush. Has made a number of prominent documentaries including Meeting A Milestone (on Ustad Bismillah Khan), Beyond the Himalayas, Land of Sand Dunes, Ray (On Satyajit Ray), Impermanence (On HH Dalai Lama). He has won 16 National Awards besides Filmfare Awards and many International awards. He is also the first Indian to win the coveted Vittorio Di Sica Award. He was awarded the Knighthood of the Star of the Italian Solidarity in July 2006.

Håkan Nesser is one of Sweden’s most successful authors, with a number of successful novels, mostly crime fiction. He has won Best Swedish Crime Novel Award three times and his novel Carambole won the Glass Key award in 2000. His books have been translated from Swedish into 9 languages. Hakan Nesser has published 20 books in Swedish. Five from his series about Van Veeteren have so far been translated to English. They are Borkmann’s Point (2006), The Return (2007), The Mind’s Eye (2008), Woman with Birthmark (2009), and The Inspector and Silence (2010).

Hanif Kureishi is the author of numerous novels, short story collections, screenplays and plays. Born and brought up in Kent, he read philosophy at King’s College, London. His screenplay of “My Beautiful Laundrette” won the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. In 1991, he wrote and directed “London Kills Me.” His novels include “The Buddha of Suburbia,” which won the Whitbread Award and was adapted into a BBC television series; “The Black Album”; “Intimacy”; “Something to Tell You” and “The Last Word,” which was published in 2014. He has been awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and his work has been translated into thirty-six languages.

Indrapramit is a writer and artist from Kolkata, India. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Apex Magazine, Redstone Science Fiction and Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana, among others. He also writes reviews for publications including Slant Magazine and Strange Horizons, and comics for ACK Media. He has an MFA degree from the University of British Columbia, which he uses as a small tablemat while pretending to be an adult. His first novel is due out shortly.

Jawhar Sircar is the Chief Executive Officer of Prasar Bharati, India's national public service broadcaster, with the rank of Secretary to the Government of India. He supervises the two broadcasting networks of India, namely, All India Radio (AIR) & Doordarshan (TV): that are among the first three biggest in the world. He has served as the Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India from late 2008 to February 2012. He resigned to take over the current assignment.

Jeet Thayil is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is best known as a poet and is the author of four collections: These Errors Are Correct, English, Apocalypso and Gemini. His first novel, Narcopolis, was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize as well as the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He is the editor of the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, 60 Indian Poets and a collection of essays, Divided Time: India and the End of Diaspora. He is the author of the libretto for the opera Babur in London, commissioned by the UK-based Opera Group with music by the Zurich-based British composer Edward Rushton. Thayil is also known as a performance poet and musician. As a songwriter and guitarist, he is one half of the contemporary music project Sridhar/Thayil (Mumbai, New Delhi). In 2012, Thayil's poetry collection These Errors are Correct was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for English. He was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and The Hindu Literary Prize (2013) for his debut novel Narcopolis. In 2013, Jeet Thayil became the first Indian author to win the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

John Elliott is a former Financial Times journalist and Asia Sentinel’s India correspondent. His best-selling book Implosion: India’s Tryst with Reality has just been published as a paperback. Based in New Delhi, he writes the Riding the Elephant blog on South Asia current affairs, which also appears on the websites of Newsweek (US) and The Independent (UK). He first came to India in 1983 and has also reported for The Economist, Fortune magazine, and the New Statesman.

K. Anis Ahmed is a Bangladeshi writer and publisher of the English-language daily newspaper Dhaka Tribune and the literary journal Bengal Lights. Ahmed is the author of two books: a short story collection called Good Night, Mr. Kissinger and a novel, The World in My Hands. He has been called one of the most significant voices in Bangladesh today. Ahmed is part of a new generation of writers who use English "to connect to the larger corpus of world literature", and as a "rejection of the insularity of contemporary Bangla-language literature”.

Kishwar Desai is an Indian author and columnist. Her latest novel The Sea of Innocence has just been published in India and will shortly be published in UK and Australia. Her first novel, Witness the Night won the Costa Book Award in 2010 for Best First Novel and has been translated into over 25 languages. It was also shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel Award and long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her critically acclaimed novel, Origins of Love was published in June 2012. Desai also has a biography Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt to her credit. She has also had a long and successful career as a print and TV journalist.

Kalyan Ray is currently a Professor of English in New Jersey. His poems and translations have appeared at the US and India; some have been anthologized. His novel Eastwords was adopted by several universities and colleges in Asia and the US as a text in courses on Post-Colonial literature. His new novel No Country is about the Irish and Indian diaspora. He has published several books of translations of contemporary Indian poetry into English, including City of Memories, which has a Preface by Allen Ginsberg, and Emperor Babur’s Prayers and Other Poems by Sankha Ghosh.

Kanishk Tharoor is the author of Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories (Aleph, 2015), a forthcoming collection of short stories. His journalism, criticism, and short stories have appeared in international and Indian publications; his short fiction was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the United States. He studied at Yale, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with BAs in History and Literature; at Columbia, where he was a FLAS fellow in Persian and South Asian studies; and at New York University, where he had a fellowship in the Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City.

Krishna Bose is an Indian political, educator and social worker and was a member of parliament. Krishna taught for 40 years at the City College, Kolkata, where she was head of the Department of English and served as the Principal of the college for eight years.

Laura McPhee is an American photographer. McPhee considers her lifework is to "look at and understand the language of a place". Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Center, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others. McPhee is a Professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design where she joined the faculty in 1986.

Leila Seth is an eminent judge and played a major role in the removal of gender bias in the Indian legal framework. She is the first woman judge from the Delhi High Court, and played a key role in making gender-related amendments to various Indian laws. She is also the mother of the world famous author Vikram Seth. Leila Seth has written and released her autobiography, On Balance, which chronicles her initial struggles in life, experiences with the law, her marriage, and her personal life. Her book We the Children Of India - The Preamble To Our Constitution is especially meant for children, and the author ensures that the young readers get a good grasp of what the Preamble to the Indian Constitution is all about.

Lionel Fogarty is an Indigenous Australian poet and political activist. He was born at Barambah (now called Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve) in Queensland where he grew up. He has been involved in Aboriginal activism from his teenage years, mainly in Southern Queensland on issues such as Land Rights, Aboriginal health and deaths in custody. His brother, Daniel Yock died at the hands of police in 1993. His poetry, while in no way dismissible as simply 'political poetry', can be seen as an extension of these activities on another front. Common themes are the maintenance of traditional Aboriginal culture and the everyday realities of European occupation. Among the most 'experimental' of contemporary Australian poetry, his work has sometimes been described as 'surrealist'. Fogarty has been involved with not-for-profit poetry organisation, The Red Room Company, participating in Unlocked, a program for inmates in New South Wales correctional centres, as well its creative projects including Clubs and Societies and The Poet's Life Works.

Marc Parent, born of an American mother and a French father, has been working in international publishing for 28 years in the wake of his studies in French and Comparative literature in Paris and New York. For the last 10 years, he was a publisher of foreign fiction and non-fiction at Editions Buchet/Chastel, in France, where he put together a major Indian and Pakistani catalogue -considered the best in Europe- of writers. In May 2013, Marc started a one-of-a-kind international literary agency in Paris representing writers from all over the world, with a special focus on fiction and non-fiction from India and Pakistan.

Meera Mitra is a development specialist and an independent consultant working across the corporate and development sectors. Meera Mitra is the author of It’s Only Business: India’s Corporate Social Responsiveness in a Globalised World and Breaking Through: India’s Stories of Beating the Odds on Poverty.

Michael Buckley is an award winning Canadian journalist who authored the first ever guidebook to Tibet. A nomad at heart, Michael Buckley thrives on adventuring in remote corners of the globe. He is the author of a dozen books, including Meltdown in Tibet (a shocking environmental expose), Eccentric Explorers (winner of Biography category, National Indie Excellence Awards, USA, 2009), Shangri-La: a Guide to the Himalayan Dream and Tibet: the Bradt Travel Guide. Buckley takes his own photographs to illustrate books and stories. He is filmmaker for three short documentaries about Tibet that tackle serious environmental issues.

Mohammed Hanif is a Pakistani writer and journalist. His first novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008) was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Book Award and longlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. It won the 2009 Commonwealth Book Prize in the Best First Book category and the 2008 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. Hanif has also written for the stage and screen, including a feature film, The Long Night (2002), a BBC radio play, What Now, Now That We Are Dead?, and the stage play The Dictator's Wife (2008). His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, published in 2011, was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize (2012), and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature (2013).

Mridula Nath Chakraborty is a Lecturer with the Writing and Society Research Centre, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. She is the editor of Being Bengali: at home and in the world. In 1997, she won the A. K. Ramanujan Award for translation from two Indian languages and has translated and co-edited, with Rani Ray, A Treasury of Bangla Stories. Her translations have appeared in The Lotus Singers: Stories from Contemporary South Asia, The Table is Laid: the Oxford Anthology of South Asian Food Writing, The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature, Katha Prize Stories and The Wordsmiths. She curated the Australia-India Literatures International Forum in Sydney 2012 and is now convening the project LITERARY COMMONS! Writing Australia-India in the Asian century with Indigenous, Dalit & multilingual tongues in India and Australia.

Nabaneeta Dev Sen was born in 1938 in Calcutta into a family of well-known poets -- her father was Narendra Dev and her mother was Radharani Devi. Her name was chosen for her by Rabindranath Tagore himself. Nabaneeta Dev Sen is one of the most versatile Bengali female writers of India today. Her spontaneity, unique style of expression, vast and varied experience of life is evident in her poems, short stories, novels, features, and essays. She was a professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. She is the founder and president of West Bengal Women Writers' Association. Her first collection of poems Pratham Pratyay was published in 1959. She now has many books to her credit in a variety of genres: short stories, essays, travelogues, poetry, fiction, children's literature, verse-plays, humour. Even her most scholarly essays are remarkable for the charming prose and sense of humour.

Naseeruddin Shah is an Indian film and stage actor and director, and a prominent figure in Indian parallel cinema. Shah has won numerous awards in his career, including three National Film Awards, three Filmfare Awards and an award at the Venice Film Festival. The government of India has honoured him with both the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan awards for his contributions to Indian cinema.

Pia Padukone was born, raised and continues to live in New York City. A graduate of Stuyvesant High School and the London School of Economics, Pia has worked as a copywriter in healthcare advertising. In their spare time, Pia and her husband write ‘Two Admirable Pleasures’ a blog that combines their shared passions for books and the culinary dishes that are inspired by them. Pia debuts with Where Earth Meets Water and is working on her second novel.

Ramachandra Guha is a historian, author and columnist based in Bangalore. Best described as a multi-faceted personality, he writes on cricket, history, environment and politics. Ramachandra Guha is the author of the internationally acclaimed India After Gandhi. His other books include Makers of Modern India, A Corner of a Foreign Field and Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals and India. He has taught at the London School of Economics, Yale, Stanford, and The Indian Institute of Science. He also writes columns for well known Indian newspapers. His latest book, Patriots and Partisans, is a wonderfully readable collection of essays on a wide range of topics.

Razi Ahmed is the founding director of the annual, not-for-profit Lahore Literary Festival (LLF), the first such public initiative in Lahore, Pakistan. He has organised two successive editions of the festival since its debut in 2013. His full-time responsibilities are at Associated Group where he serves as a director in its LPG business, and sits on the boards of Newsweek Pakistan and Zohra and Z.Z.Ahmed Foundation. He led AG’s initiatives in public education at Government College, Forman Christian College, and Care Schools. Ahmed has also written for publications in Pakistan and abroad on politics and culture.

Reza Deghati, born in Tabriz, Iran, is an Iranian-French photojournalist of Azerbaijani origin, who works under the name Reza. Reza has covered much of the globe for National Geographic Magazine. Several films about Reza's work have been produced by National Geographic Television, most notably Frontline Diaries, which won an Emmy Award in 2002. In 2003, Reza served as Creative Director for National Geographic's most viewed documentary, Inside Mecca. As part of its Exceptional Journeys series, National Geographic released a DVD in May 2008 looking at Reza's career as a photojournalist, with special features highlighting his extensive humanitarian work. In 2001, he founded Aina (Persian for The Mirror), an international non-profit organization dedicated to educating and empowering Afghan women and children through the media. By providing educational opportunities in the field of communications and multimedia, Aina aims to equip Afghans with the skills required to build a self-sufficient, democratic, and unified country. In 1991, Reza served as a consultant to the United Nations in Afghanistan, helping to distribute food to populations in war-torn parts of the country. For his work on such humanitarian causes and because of his work with Aina in Afghanistan, National Geographic awarded him the title of National Geographic Fellow in 2006.

Robin Singh Ngangom was born in Imphal, Manipur, in North Eastern India. He is a bilingual poet who writes in English and Manipuri. He studied literature at St Edmund's College and the North Eastern Hill University Shillong, where he now teaches. His books of poetry include Words and the Silence (1988), Time's Crossroads (1994) and The Desire of Roots (2006). His essays include Poetry in A Time of Terror which appeared in The Other Side Of Terror: An Anthology Of Writings On Terrorism In South Asia. He received the Katha Award for Translation in 1999.

Ruchir Joshi is a writer, filmmaker, photographer and columnist for The Telegraph, India Today as well as other publications. He is best known for his debut novel titled The Last Jet-Engine Laugh. He is also the editor of India’s first anthology of contemporary erotica Electric Feather: The Tranquebar Book of Erotic Stories.

Saad Bin Jung comes from the erstwhile royalty of Bhopal, Pataudi and the aristocracy of the Paigahs of Hyderabad. He is the author of Subhan and I, Wild Tales from the Wild and Matabele Dawn, and writes extensively on cricket and ecology for several newspapers. He is popular as an expert commentator on cricket on TV. He is a former international cricketer, a wildlifer, an angler, conservationist and a photographer. He has received accolades for his conservation works, and is a member of the Wildlife Advisory Board of Karnataka.

Sajeda Momin is a journalist, writer and editor. She has worked as a resident editor at The Asian Age, Assitant Editor at The Statesman, was a foreign correspondent for DNA and features editor of The Bengal Post.

Salil Tripathi lives in London and is a columnist with Mint. He has written extensively on politics, economics, the arts and business for more than 25 years for the Wall Street Journal, Far Eastern Economic Review, The New Statesman, India Today, and other publications. As a correspondent in Singapore and Hong Kong, Salil covered the Asian economic crisis, and is the author of Offence: The Hindu Case. He is currently writing a travelogue, a book on a corporate scandal and a novel.

Sandip Roy is a senior editor with Firstpost.com, one of India's leading news portals. Don't Let Him Know (Bloomsbury) is his first novel. He is also a commentator for National Public Radio in the US and hosts a weekly audio postcard on public radio KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco. His work has appeared in various anthologies including Storywallah! and Out: Stories from the New Queer India and he has won awards for his journalism. He currently lives in Kolkata.

Saskya Jain was born in Ahmedabad and grew up in New Delhi. Educated at Berlin’s Free University and at Columbia University, she holds an MFA in Fiction from Boston University, where she received the Florence Engel Randall Award and the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, most recently in The Economist and The Caravan. She lives in New Delhi and Berlin. Fire Under Ash is her first novel, and she is currently working on her second.

Dr. Shashi Tharoor is the bestselling author of fifteen books, both fiction and non-fiction, including India Shastra that will be released in January 2015, besides being a noted critic and columnist, a former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and a former Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India. He served 29 years at the United Nations, culminating as Under-Secretary General under Kofi Annan’s leadership of the organization. On returning to India he contested the 2009 elections on behalf of the Indian National Congress, and was elected to Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram. Re-elected in 2014, he chairs Parliament’s External Affairs Committee. Dr. Shashi Tharoor’s books include the path-breaking satire The Great Indian Novel (1989), India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997) and most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century (2012). He has won numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, India's highest honour for overseas Indians.

Shekhar Gupta is a famous Indian journalist who is currently vice-chairman of the India Today Group. Until June 2014, he served 19 years as editor-in-chief of the Indian Express. Gupta writes a weekly column called "National Interest" for India Today magazine. His "National Interest" columns for the Indian Express were collected in his 2014 book Anticipating India. He also hosts an interview-based television show Walk the Talk on NDTV 24x7. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government in 2009. Shekhar has received assorted awards: the 1985 Inlaks award for young journalist of the year, G K Reddy Award for Journalism, the Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Memorial Award for National Integration. He was awarded a Padma Bhushan by the Govt of India in 2009. Under his leadership, The Indian Express won the Vienna-based International Press Institute’s Award for Outstanding Journalism in the Public Interest thrice - the first time for its coverage of the Gujarat riots of 2002, the second time for uncovering the Bihar flood relief scam in 2005 and the third time for its sustained investigation into the Malegaon and Modasa blasts of 2008 and the alleged role of Hindu extremists and organisations.

Shikha Mukherjee is Advisor, Corporate Social Responsibility, and directly oversees the Anand Paul Education Support Programme in Kolkata for underprivileged children and Apeejay Tea’s CSR and Sustainability programmes. The prestigious The Paul Foundation scholarship programme for academic excellence was started by her. She completed her Masters of Arts from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1977 and joined the Times of India Group in 1978. She headed the lauch of The Times of India edition in Kolkata and remained Political Editor of The Times of India till 2001.

A social anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Delhi University, Shiv Visvanathan taught at the Delhi School of Economics, was senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and Professor at the DAIICT, Gandhinagar. He is the author of Organising for Science, A Carnival for Science and co-editor of Foul Play: Chronicles of corruption1947-1997 with Harsh Sethi. He is a familiar presence on TV channels as an expert commentator.

Sorabh Pant is an Indian stand-up comedian and writer. Having done over 250 shows in over 17 cities, he has been rated amongst India's top 10 stand-up comedians by The Times of India. The Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan has dubbed him as "the funniest guy on stage". In a poll by IBN Live in March 2012, he was listed No. 1 in the 30 most interesting Twitter users in India. Pant released his debut novel 'The Wednesday Soul' in December 2011. His second novel will be released shortly.

Dr Sreeradha Datta is presently Director, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata. She has been a Fellow with Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi from 1998 till 2011. Specializing in security studies in South Asia, Dr. Datta has a Ph.D from School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi). Her publications include, Caretaking Democracy: Political Process in Bangladesh 2006-08, Bangladesh: A Fragile Democracy, The Northeast Complexities and its Determinants, Changing Dynamics in Southeast Asia, besides several articles for journals, edited volumes, newspapers and academic websites.

Srinath Raghavan is Senior Fellow at Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is also Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London. He has been associated with King’s College’s e-learning programme, War in the Modern World, and was a Visiting Lecturer at Royal Air Force College, Cranwell. He took his MA and PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. Prior to joining academia, he spent six years as an infantry officer in the Indian army. Srinath’s research interests are in the international politics of South Asia, India’s foreign and defence policies since 1947, civil-military relations, Indian military history, and strategic theory. His book War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years was published in early 2010. He is now writing an international history of the India-Pakistan war of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh.

Sudha Kaul , the founder of Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy (IICP), was driven by an intrinsic belief in the ability to learn in children with special needs. The institution founded in April 1974, has grown into a major training institute in India and is a catalyst agency, having initiated services for cerebral palsy in major cities in India and every district of West Bengal. IICP won the National Award from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India for the Best Disability NGO in 2004. In 2007-2009, Sudha was appointed President of the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC), an international Society for persons with complex communication needs. Sudha is the recipient of several national and international accolades and was awarded the Padmashree in 2004. She holds a Phd in in Augmentative and Alternative Communication from Manchester Metropolitan University. She has authored several a books on AAC and presented papers at numerous national and international conferences. Sudha is currently chairing a committee on bringing out a new Disability Legislation for India.

Sugata Bose is a historian, author and Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University. He has published extensively, including a major biography of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who was his grand-uncle. He is joint editor, with Dr Sisir Kumar Bose, of the Collected Works of Netaji published by the Netaji Research Bureau. He has translated into English all the songs Tagore composed on his overseas voyages and recorded them on four CDs titled Visva Yatri Rabindranath. Bose’s many books include Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (with Ayesha Jalal) and A Hundred Horizons: the Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire.

Sujata Sen is Director East India, British Council. She also leads on Re-Imagine: India-UK Cultural Relations in the 21st Century, a research and dialogue initiative which attempts to understand what the relationship between the two countries will look like in the future and how it can be shaped for mutual benefit. She is a Director with British Council Management Services, NOIDA. Before joining the British Council she has been a journalist, columnist and a publishing editor. She holds honorary positions in various organisations and Trusts.

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray is an author and columnist whose last major work, Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India, won the Crossword Vodafone award for non-fiction. He has recently published a revised new edition of an earlier work which made history, Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim. Another significant book is Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium.

Supriya Chaudhuri is an Indian scholar of English literature. She is Professor Emeritus at Kolkata's Jadavpur University. Her scholarship ranges over many fields, notably literary theory, 18th Century British Literature, modernism, and the Renaissance. She specializes in the history of ideas. She was an Oxford badminton half-blue and holds a black belt in Kyokushinkai karate. She has edited the following volumes: Writing Over: Medieval to Renaissance (edited along with Sukanta Chaudhuri), Literature and Gender: Essays for Jasodhara Bagchi (edited along with Sajni Mukherji), Literature and Philosophy: Essays in Connexion, Petrarch and the Renaissance (edited along with Sukanta Chaudhuri). She is a major contributor to the Oxford Tagore Translations and has translated Relationships (Jogajog).

Sutanu Ghosh is Managing Director of GBPL, a leading Multidisciplinary Consultant. His area of specialization includes Urban Environment Management, Infrastructure System Planning, Environmental Impact Assessment, Water Quality Management, Industrial Waste and Waste Water Treatment and Distribution, Air Pollution, Environmental Auditing etc. He is the Founder and Convenor of the Kolkata Chapter of the Indian Environmental Association and Secretary of the Kolkata Chapter of the Consulting Engineers Association of India. He is currently the Senior Vice-President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and has been Chairman of the Environment Sub-Committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry for a span of seven years. He has many publications to his credit and has also presented several technical papers in National and International Conferences/Workshops.

Swapan Chakravorty was Director General of the National Library of India, Kolkata. He is also professor (on lien), Department of English, Jadavpur University. He has been the Deputy Co-ordinator of the Centre for Advanced Study programme, and part of the Departmental research projects under the ASIHSS programme. He was also Joint Director, School of Cultural Texts and Records. He teaches Renaissance European literature, early modern drama, Shakespeare, Latin classics, textual criticism, history of the book and literary theory. He is internationally acknowledged as an authority on Renaissance drama and the history of the book.

Tilottama Tharoor is a humanities professor at New York University. She studied at Loreto House and Loreto College, Kolkata, where she was known for her debating prowess. Her special focus is on Indian writing in English.

Tisca Chopra is an Indian actress who starred in the well-reviewed play Dinner With Friends. Her film debut was Platform (1993), opposite Ajay Devgan. In 2004 Tisca played the role of Prabhavati Devi, wife of JP in Prakash Jha’s film Loknayak. In 2007, she appeared in Taare Zameen Par with Aamir Khan. She acted in Nandita Das's directorial debut, Firaaq (2008). In 2011, she appeared in Madhur Bhandarkar's Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji. For 10 ml Love, Tisca was nominated Best Actress at the 11th Annual New York Indian Film Festival. Her book Acting Smart is about how to make a career in Bollywood.

Upamanyu Chatterjee joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983. His published works include short stories and the novels English, August: An Indian Story (1988), The Last Burden (1993), The Mammaries of the Welfare State (2000), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award for writing in English, Weight Loss (2006) and Way to Go (2011). In 2008, he was awarded the Order of Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government for his contribution to literature. His latest novel is titled Fairy Tales at Fifty.

Zac O’Yeah used to work at a theatre in Gothenburg, Sweden – the harbor town where his detective novel Once Upon A Time In Scandinavistan is set – and toured with a pop group until he retired early at 25 and came to India. Since then he has published twelve books in Swedish, many of them important bestsellers – including the Gandhi-biography “Mahatma!” which was short-listed for the August Prize 2008 for best nonfiction book of the year. His most recent book is the comic thriller Mr. Majestic! (2012 in English; 2013 in Swedish; 2014 in German). He is currently working on a new thriller and a film project. He is also a literary critic and columnist.